Repeat from the last thread:-

MOON. Interesting picture you posted, of the lifting tool. It appears to be fitted with alignment horns, but I am unsure what sockets they are going to align with? I assume that on the bottom of this gizmo, it has a standard H4 hydraulic connector. So put me right if you think otherwise.

We have a hydraulic unlatch-able H4 on the bottom of the DWH BOP. We have an H4 between the BOP and the LMRP. We have an H4 on top of the new spool piece that is bolted to the LMRP riser flange. We have H4 on top of the capping stack, which will connect with the new lifting tool.

I think I read up thread, that the Cap stack will come off first. The spool piece; LMRP and the BOP will then come off the well head in one string. What say you?

Thanks so much for the tripod fish (my favorite critter yet), Moon.

Thanks for this.

I'm not a chE but I'm hoping we have one on board. What I'd like to know is 1) if there's anything in the data that could pinpoint Macondo oil in the samples and 2) same for Corexit, either type.

I wonder if anyone actually read the report before broadcasting it all over the net. The report quite clearly states that no sign of leaked hydrocarbon was found in the oyster samples. Yes, there was significant hydrocarbon found in the oysters, but that hydrocarbon was from plants, not from the spill.

They did find evidence of leaked hydrocarbon in grass and silt samples.

email sent to Smith Stag:

I'm looking at http://www.bostonchemicaldata.com/LEAN/Data/DWH/LabReports/LabLEAN124to1...

Interested citizen, no axe to grind except for being pissed abut the entire debacle. Could you or your staff please point me to where in this report there are clear indicators in samples of either Corexit EC9500A or Corexit EC9527A and if there's some fingerprint that's clearly associated with oil from the Macondo well? Much appreciated.

I agree with sunnnv and Speaker.

I read the Boston Chemical report carefully. The form of the lab report is meticulous. Like many lab reports, it has too little narrative to allow much inference except by those who know the unstated context. The report does not mention dispersant or Corexit. The report covers 13 samples (2 water, 4 silt, 1 grass, 1 vegetation, 1 crabs, 3 oysters, 1 mussels). All were compared to a reference oil source, and conclusions were made as to likelihood of contamination based on biomarkers and presence of PAHs. The groups of analytes identified were polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (enumerated), hydrocarbons, and percent moisture.

There is no statement about sampling protocol, but with so few samples, it’s reasonable to assume the sampling was selective (perhaps where unusual sediment, floc, tarballs, oil sheen, or soiled plants were found), not random or broadly representative. There is no statement about locations or dates of samples, nor whether taken at times/places where fishing was closed or open. So there is no basis for inference as to whether the data are representative of typical field conditions or whether seafood organisms were eligible for market.

Of the 13 samples, conclusions were stated for 8:
Strong evidence for source-oil contamination for 2 (grass, vegetation) based on biomarkers and PAHs.
Reasonable evidence for contamination for 1 (silt) based on biomarkers and PAHs.
Weak evidence for contamination for 2 (silt, silt) based on biomarkers, PAHs detected below reporting limits.
Weak evidence for contamination for 1 (water) based on biomarkers but no PAHs detected.
No evidence for contamination for 2 (mussel, oyster) based on biomarkers but PAHs detected below reporting limits.
No conclusions are given for 5 samples (water, silt, crabs, oysters, oysters).

Note that none of the seafood organisms tested as contaminated!

The lab report seems to bear no relation to several statements made in the news article.
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/08/degraded_oil_in_mississippi_so.html

Naples area water samples showing signs of Corexit 9527 (the nasty one) http://youtu.be.com/ym6haebWz0A

50.3 ppm butoxyethanol-2 in swimming pool north of Tampa, (sample date: 17Aug10): http://is.gd/eR7Qw

I've observed patches of, what seems to me uncharacteristic for this area, brown, turbid, water, and thin brown film/sediment in areas around here in Naples, south of the pier, north of gordon pass, on a recent kayak outing. I also observed patches of dark grey sediment, the grains didn't appear to be tar, based on hardness. Could be limestone, dolostone grains for all I know, just noting here because I was looking at the sediment more closely as a result of the patches of brown water, and they seemed unusual.

On the same day as I observed this, I also noted a brown film in our pool, which could very well be related to chemicals being added the week before. Again, noting this, because it was unusual, and concurrent to the observations of brown patches, where usually the water is clear, and the sediment grains are normally very light-coloured.

In other words, I'm not trying to unnecessarily hype, but trying to be complete.

In other news, I tried BBIC for the first time last night, it was pretty darn good.

Hope everyone is well, sorry if any of this has been posted and addressed elsewhere.

edit: added links to a couple low-qual pics I took. Deleted some to make room for pictures of the wildlife I saw that day, which was plentiful; dolphins, manatees, tons of fish, (sometimes schools of small fish can make the water appear darker, and while there were plenty of places where this was the case, the brown water/sediment was clearly unrelated), etc...

ChuckV US Patent 7,013,975 Example 9

...The cement composition described above was foamed at 200 F and a pressure of 1000 psi in the MACS analyzer, i.e. an instrument known as a multiple analysis cement slurry (MACS) analyzer. The foamed cement slurry in the MACS analyzer was transferred at 200 F through a manifold system to curing cells that were preheated and charged with nitrogen at the same pressure to which the slurry is subjected in the mixing chamber of the analyzer [snip]

So as long as Halliburton subjects the mixing chamber to 12,000 psi I suppose everything will be A-OK????

Bruce,

You wrote:

"From the 4/18/10 Halliburton report 5.2

Liquid volume In = 1007.80
Total Volume Out = 1016.95

Oooooops! They may have pushed that cement too far. John Wright might hit cement yet!!! "
___________________________

I'd say the cause for that volume increase is the addition of foaming agents and gas. Note that in section 5.2 at minute 22.38 the in / out cumulative volumes are equal, but thereafter "out" is greater.

Look at section 3.2, Foam Pumping Schedule for liquids. Note that between minutes 22.38 and 30.12 they add 11.8 gal of foaming agents.

Look at section 3.3, Foam Pumping Schedule For Gas. Note that between minutes 22.38 and 30.12 they inject 22,700 scf of gas.

You can also go to section 3.4, Foam Slurry Data, and tally up the Base Slurry Vol. and Foam Slurry Vol. columns. I get 1007.39 bbl and 1016.16 bbl, respectively. The 8.77 bbl delta differs slightly from the 9.15 bbl increase in section 5.2., but it's essentially 9 bbl in both cases.

I'd guess that the expansion followed by contraction that's evident in section 5.2 goes to your interest in compression effects. (At minute 42.75 "out" exceeds "in" by over 37 barrels.) I've continued to try to find some real example of compression in foamed cements without much success. I did find an article today that's interesting from a deep water perspective. It's an American Association of Drilling Engineers paper from 2003 regarding reverse foam cementing (pumped down the annulus and up the casing) of an offshore well. It was done with a bottom hole temp of 415F at 21,555 ft TVD. See:

http://www.aade.org/TechPapers/2003Papers/Case%20Histories%20I/AADE-03-N...

Regarding those old days (grunt pay and IBM 360's): I'd say your 'Nam-era grunt pay recollection of $120/mo is about right. During an Air Force stint (1963-1967), my pay ranged from $75/mo all the way to a princely $215/mo.

When I returned to school after that, the engineering curriculum had introduced something new--a required FORTRAN programming course using your fabled IBM 360. Coding sheets. Punch cards. Deliver the card deck to the computer facility today. Come back tomorrow to find out what you goofed up. What fun. But by 1973 things had advanced so far that, for only $395, you could buy a portable calculator (the HP-35) capable of taking square roots!

CV

These are dissolving hydrates, so yes, they are at least partly oil and gas. But there is no reason to believe that this fresh oil or gas.

Reasons to believe that these are from hydrates:

1. The behavior one can observe with the dirt coming out on top of the stack is similar to the behavior we have seen earlier with hydrates outside of the capping stack collet connector. Small drops leaving steadily, bigger chunks braking off every once a while. The total mass so small and seemingly decreasing that IMO there is no reason to worry.

2. Thadmiral said so.

I recall a computer science professor in a class long ago talking about what it means for a computer resource to be in use. He gave the example of a telephone book, which is "in use" whenever there is a possibility that it might be needed at a moment's notice, even though it is only rarely pulled down from the shelf and opened.

The relief wells may fall into the category things that served an essential function without actually being "used".

I thought they were kind of impressive too. It would have been good if we had had them in the Gulf of Mexico earlier, so we had an idea of baseline conditions.

It appears that BP is going to make the negative pressure test the focus of it's analysis of what went wrong on the DWH. And of course that is one of the key events. But focusing on it to the exclusion of other events will, IMO, present a less than accurate or complete picture of what led to the blowout.

There are more issues that merit investigation than I care to touch on here. But one that is important IMO and that BP's version may seek to side-step is the human factor issue of the dynamics of the relationship between the company man and the OIM, and how that may have impacted decision making and error compounding.

Because under one reasonable interpretation of the evidence, had the company man not asserted his authority over the driller and OIM, the crew would not have followed the procedures they did in displacing the riser and conducting the negative test that the company man insisted on and the crew objected to. And as a result, it is not unreasonable to assume for purposes of this analysis, the blowout would have been avoided.

If Harrell did indeed use the pinchers remark to express serious misgivings, and, after the blow out, did indeed say, in effect, "see, I told you that was a really dumb way to go, are you happy now," then clearly he did not stop a procedure he felt needlessly put the rig at risk. For whatever reason, he was unable to assert his authority over the company man and say no. Had he, disaster would have been avoided. Presumably, he didn't out of concerns for his job or concerns over the relationship between BP and TO. That's a problem. How do you fix that.

Granted, the underlying assumptions are not proven, but they are not unreasonable, and I think the problem exists and is a legitimate focus regardless. This relationship is dysfunctional, or potentially so, in that the de facto roles and authority do not line up with the assigned roles and authority, and what is presented as a check and balance is really often just a rubber stamp that presents a high error compounding risk. Plus the ultimate authority is left in the hands of the party with the conflict of interest of profit vs. safety.

edit: My assumptions fail to note the back and forth that does occur and the value of the OIM challenging and expressing concerns to the company man about proposed procedures. But nevertheless, the OIM did not exercise his ultimate authority when it would have really counted and could have avoided disaster, assuming Harrell's reservations were as strong as they seem to have been. Is there a way to make the OIM a more effective check and balance on poor judgment or error by the CM?

syn -- valid points all but I still like to simplify the situation: Harrell et al now say they thought they WERE NOT doing anything to endanger the rig or crew. The actions they ordered led to the blow out and explosion. Obviously their conclusions were wrong. They are responsible for their conclusions: they performed the tests and did the analysis. So far no testimony has been given to indicate that anyone else had an influence on that decision. The well blew out because Harrell, with the consent of the OIM, ordered the csg/riser to be displaced with sea water. Whatever did or didn't happen down hole isn't relevant: the well kicked and blew out because of the displacement. Had the mud not been replaced with sea water the well would not have blown out even if they had the worse cmt job in the world or every joint of csg ruptured. Any hand that honestly thinks it's isn't dangerous to displace the well bore with a fluid of insuffucient weight to prevent a hydrocarbon bearing reservoir from flowing is WRONG. And that for a change, is not MHO: it is an indisputable fact. It's no different than pointing an "empty" gun at someones head and pulling the trigger...doesn't matter if you checked it a dozens times to make sure it's not loaded: IT IS DANGEROUS. Many people have been shot with an "empty" gun. Most wells have blown out when "they" believed there was sufficient control in place. The well wasn't monitored sufficiently to see the kick coming or that data was also misinterpreted. Had it been the blow out might not have occurred. Even if the well had been shut in successfully and the blow out not occurred, the well kicked because of the sea water displacement. If the BOP had stopped the blow out the decision to displace was still wrong. And that decision was made by the company man and was not prevented by the OIM.

There is little interpretation as possible in my above statement: the well came in because there wasn't sufficient head to prevent flow. The lack of head was a direct result of the decision to displace with sea water. The displacement was ordered by the BP company man. This led to the blow out and 11 deaths and an environmental/economic nightmare for the Gulf Coast. As I've pointed out before: even if every possibile mistake in csg design, cmt composition, cmt testing, centralizers decisions, etc, were valid, the well would not have blown out if the displacement had not been done. And that decision was made by the company man with the now self admitted concurrence of the OIM. From my simple view of the law both men have admitted their guilt, however it might be qualified, for the accident.

Your interpretation of the evidence is jumbled and incoherent.

The fact is the negative test and the replacement to seawater was part of the well plan. That is not my opinion that is written in black and white. That well plan was prepared in advance and approved and reviewed by half a dozen BP engineers as well as been reviewed and approved by the MMS.

There does appear to have been some discussions (possibly even arguments) on April 20 in regards to how the rig was going to carry out its implementation of the well plan In particular how it was going to proceed during the afternoon of April 20. But all the evidence also indicates that whatever disagreements existed in the day preceding the blowout those issues had been resolved at least an hour or two before the blowout occurred.

It is pretty obvious that neither the BP company men or the OIM or the mud loggers or the men in the drilling shack were acting as if there was danger lurking around the corner. All the evidence indicates that none of these people acted as if they were being cautious. There is no evidence that a single one of them behaved as if they suspected that danger was lurking. If the OIM knew he had just committed the rig to an extremely dangerous procedure as you suppose he did - Why did he take a shower and go to bed?

syncro, would you perchance have a link to that statement (or remember Harrell's attorney's name)? I tried searching for it t'other day but couldn't get very far. Thanks.

Capping stack lean I can understand. How came BOP to lean 2 degrees?

Since no one knows what is going on any more with BP and there OPS. Look at the debris on the ROV's streaming down like a matrix screen saver. Do we have any idea as to what it is??

Your taking advice from someone who is just reading the headlines that Thad Allens spits out...Rockman sounds like all he does is play his guitar all day long since he is always lurking these forums. Or he just works for BP...

In contrast to the first story, however . . .

BP Spent $93.4 Million On Advertising Between April And July

,,, According to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who's heading one of the investigations into the oil spill, that's three times the amount BP spent on advertising in the same period last year. ...

Do any of you smart guys here know how to find out who writes the site over at Floridaoilspilllaw.com?

Whomever it is they are hiding. from "whois"

floridaoilspilllaw.com
AboutUs: floridaoilspilllaw.com

Registration Service Provided By: UK2 Group
Contact:
Visit: http://uk2group.com

Domain name: floridaoilspilllaw.com

Registrant Contact:
DomainSecrecy.net
Private Registrant ()

Fax:
164 N. Spring Creek Parkway
Providence, UT 84332
US

Administrative Contact:
DomainSecrecy.net
Private Registrant ()
+1.4357553433
Fax: +1.4357553449
164 N. Spring Creek Parkway
Providence, UT 84332
US

Technical Contact:
DomainSecrecy.net
Private Registrant ()
+1.4357553433
Fax: +1.4357553449
164 N. Spring Creek Parkway
Providence, UT 84332
US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
dns1.vps.net
dns2.vps.net

Creation date: 18 May 2010 17:10:00
Expiration date: 18 May 2011 12:10:00

I've wondered about that too. The "contact" button leads to a mailing address in Stuart, Fl. Maybe it is a law firm looking for damage claimants. I guess someone could email them saying Corexit has given grampaw leukemia, and see what response you get.

They are doing everything they can to stir up fear and suspicion.

The WHOIS database shows the registration for Floridaoilspilllaw.com as "private." No easy way to find out. BTW, with no fully-disclosed "About Us" page, it is a pretty good indication of something not right.

Because of their name, I originally though that this was a shill site for attorneys drumming up clients. Now, I think it is just another ad-whore website.

The site is heavily into Google advertising (check out the number of advertising spaces on their pages) so they get paid when someone clicks through to an ad. With enough traffic and enough resulting clicks, they can make a lot of money.

It has proven that one can stir up the sheepeople with bad news. BTW, even the MSM know this; try to find much good news on the front page of a paper.

Websites, because of free speech, can basically say anything they want to short of very, very minimal limitations in the law. "Heavily slanted" news and information is a bit of an understatement.

BTW, none of their stories even has to be true. The wilder, the more over the top that the coverage gets, the more clicks they get from the sheepeople and the more revenue from Google.

Some sites, like GLP, make no pretense of being truthful (read their disclaimer sometime). Other sites mask the same drivel as "news" to fool the gullible. In short, there are no ethical or professional standards a website has to meet.

As scams go, pretty low risk way to make money under the guise of presenting an "alternative" view.

who writes the site over at Floridaoilspilllaw.com?

Silly me. Anything goes. I forgot.

beachmommy,

I believe the claim that BP denied knowledge of the sunken tar in Pensacola Bay came from PNJ reporter Kimberley Blair, who based the claim on "13 interviews" but didn't give any names or quotations.

Obviously there is tar and will be tar in the areas that got hit by the slick and beyond. Everybody who has learned anything about what happens to oil in the water knows that. If someone can produce a quotation from a BP or government official to the effect that there is no more tar in the Gulf, I'd like to see it. Otherwise let's stop ginning up the "everybody's lying to us all the time" theme.

I hope you have reported his death threats to the FBI. Probably some internet resources you can contact over his site but I can't think of any at the moment.

NAOM

From Beachmommie's comment:

"Gregg Hall
Sorry if I have offended anyone but anyone who knows me knows I am a warrior soul and I hide from no one. In another time the heads of my enemies would adorn spears outside my abode. We have violated the laws of nature and survival of the fittest and have diluted the DNA of enlightened powerful beings who got us to this point"

Good grief, the guy is really in a bad way! Diluted DNA? Maybe he was a fan of Hitler, too!

Unfortunately, I do believe there are many environmental uncertainties about this oil disaster that still need to come to light in order for people to feel they've been dealt with truthfully, and that time will eventually heal the wounds. But it is nutballs like the ones that go over the top, that make it so hard to discern truth from lies, reality from imagination.

I just wish there was a better way for the average person to recognize the truth from the BS.

Please tell me why I should give a worm's anal polyp about this.
Did I miss something or does this make no sense whatsoever?

Hello Liz Townsend - Nice to see you spewing lies and misinformation here now that I finally blocked you from my pages.

I have had numerous people walk the area I walk with me everyday, people who had the guts to take the time to do it instead of sit in their million dollar home and talk trash about someone they don't know.

I won't bother wasting time to respond to the rest of your BS because 95% is totally false, and I wasn't a used car salesman....

I know the difference between oil and seagrass - I grew here, you flew here.

AND, I am not the one that created the pictures - I can't help what people who believe in what I am doing anymore than I can stop people like you from being a hater.

Believe what you want to believe, ANYONE that wants to see for their self, my offer to take a walk with me still applies.

I personally NEVER asked for a nickel, the people that are on my pages asked me to put that on my pages and besides one personal friend - the grand total over a couple of months was less than $1000

My tattoo was arranged and traded out in exchange for promotion months before the oil disaster occurred...

You try to act like you know so much about me and you know nothing about me - LIZ TOWNSEND from the east end of Pensacola Beach...

Gregg Hall

Interesting.

Granting the first "if," all the rest follows.

Unfortunately I'm sure that not everyone will pick up on that and will rather see it as an assertion, not an argument based upon a flawed premise.

Nothing wrong with the testing protocols or the hypothesis. If the testing produces FACTS, that's the bottom line, and you evaluate it from there.

Now if we could apply the same logic to Politics, etc....

snakehead, that's damned disappointing from not only this guy but Nat'l Geo: pure speculation, not reporting -- "could" and "may," not "did" and "will." Painful to see that kind of unprofessionalism from a source I've trusted as long as I could read.

According to yesterdays toe test, this mechanism is not necessary...
No oil under the sand, nothing to see here, have some gumbo...

rovman let slip that ROV operators are reading us and implied that they were occasionally pulling our chain for fun. 702 is Las Vegas NV. Not exactly in the oil patch, but secret squirrels have all sorts of telecom tricks.

Speaking of which, there's a secret squirrel ROV at the stack now, no feed.

Las Vegas & Clark County Nevada

702 area code

Nevada??

someone important is reading our comments

Well, far as I'm concerned, no one reading here is more important than anyone else (unless/until asinine comments undermine "anyone else's" cred).

i checked your bio and nada. are you known here by your real name and location or are you anonymous?

IF anonymous, then are you suggesting that they got info through TOD administrators?

Some have already suggested that TOD and other forums could not only contain shills, but be owned and operated by them too.

I have never believed, suggested, or implied that a cataclysmic methane bubble or tsunami was possible. I don't know who started that meme, but it wasn't me.

What I do believe is that BP has slowed down well intervention, not from an "abundance of caution," but to give their bankers and lawyers time to negotiate and close US upstream asset sales. I also believe that top kill cement was implemented to preclude measurement of flowing oil. It made no sense otherwise to stop the relief well a few feet from intersection and bottom kill. Now, bottom kill is considered "risky."

My involvement in studying the blowout, Congressional and USCG testimony, and subsea activities was mostly professional. I run a business. Offshore oil exploration crashed as a consequence of the Macondo blowout and moratorium. I also write an energy column for Seeking Alpha.

This drama is nearing a conclusion, for better or worse. If BP can recover the iron and P&A from the top, using a new BOP, that will be good. We can all go back to work.

What I fear is they have a flowing well and subsurface migration. Maybe that's okay. Top cement plug and recovery of the old BOP will satisfy the government.

the deepwater benthic community

Wouldn't those guys be the most-likely acclimated by seeps? (A fond hope of mine only?)

ta-da, Bobby Jindal's czar of coastal affairs

Blergh.

Wonder what pushed that out.

Have you ever considered the possibility that the ROV carrying the camera is the one heaving, not what it's looking at, n'fool?

Are you trying to be funny? New low in disinformation.

There's a good deck view from Q4000 right now. You can see the vessel's movement relative to the horizon, whitecaps, swinging cables and such. They've got a pretty good swell out there that I would think would affect anything subsurface (ROVs, cameras, etc) not sitting on the seabed.

Odd for sure. The legend says sonar sweeps, but that's obviously not what he's doing. He has a methanol stab in the right claw and a hydraulic stab in the left. Since he keeps turning, he drags the hoses and has stirred up a mess. Strange.

It is going to be funny when Mr. Wright punches into the casing and finds concrete.

Man: The well is NOT killed for good, and no one has said it was. It has to be properly plugged before that can be declared. Rockman said yesterday that the current situation makes it safer and more effective to do the top-down P&A, and I defer to him because he knows more about wells than I will ever understand. I still say they aren't afraid to complete the relief well, it's just not the right thing to do at this time. The RW crew is still standing by ready at a moment's notice in case the situation changes. BP is paying for that, and I don't think they would hesitate to pull out if there was NO chance the RW will be needed. They're covering all bases and trying to get this mess behind them.

If BP has shills here to discredit posters, they're wasting their time and money, because posters who need to be discredited always do it to themselves.

Personal attack, invective, sarcasm, hyperbole, ridicule without responding to issues.

pig, what you and a few others here are alleging about bp & its shills really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

TOD is well-known, widely read and has been cited a number of times in popular media. Opportunity, means & motive notwithstanding, for bp shills to intentionally invade TOD with posts in an attempt to dismiss 'everything on this board at The Oil Drum' would find its way back to a host of legal and USG groups, thereby increasing bp's (criminal) liability. Regardless of what you believe, they are not that stupid or evil.

DougR's credibility came from the fact that he made his posting here. KO on MSNBC didn't cite GLP where the post originated, he cited TOD.

KO or his staff did a terrible job of vetting the story before it ran (btw, not the first time MSNBC pulled a boned-headed play). The fact that the posting first ran at GLP would have made DougR's story toxic and untouchable on its face in any on the mainstream credible media. For it to come out after MSNBC put the story on the air made it doubly toxic to any other media.

This is one of those red-faced moments managing editors have nightmares about, "Did we check the story out enough before going with it?" I'm actually very surprised that FoxNews didn't lead with MSNBC's slip within the week considering the on-going feud with KO.

DougR shot his own credibility here; he didn't need others to do it for him.

A word of caution: I have read stuff put out by military 'think tanks' and learned to regard about 70% of the stuff as totally worthless. I learned to prefer the stuff produced by independents on the public market because you can go back and look up what they wrote 10 years ago and see if they were right.

The product 'think tanks' put out is designed to get attention (dramatic conclusions are better) so that their name is remembered the next time somebody wants something studied. Don't think that it is only the news media that produces articles with the title: "XYZ - is _Your Family_ at risk?"

The relationship with the Soviet Union Russia, in particular, is of fundamental importance for German access to oil and gas, the study says. "For Germany, this involves a balancing act between stable and privileged relations with the Soviet Union Russia and the sensitivities of (Germany's) eastern neighbors." In other words, Germany, if it wants to guarantee its own energy security, should be accommodating in relation to Moscow's foreign policy objectives, even if it means risking damage to its relations with Poland and other Eastern European states.
Peak oil would also have profound consequences for Berlin's posture toward the Middle East, according to the study. "A readjustment of Germany's Middle East policy … in favor of more intensive relations with producer countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have the largest conventional oil reserves in the region, might put a strain on German-Jewish Israeli relations, depending on the intensity of the policy change," the authors write.
When contacted by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Foreign Defense Ministry declined to comment on the study.

From the article. I changed a few things with strikes and I wondered if this could have been from 1938. I hope folks are not offended, but I thought it would fit. For the record, I know the Germans are peaceful, valuable allies now.

BP's $93 million spent on advertising after Gulf oil spill is questioned
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/09/bps_93_million...

In the heart of spill country 5 posts, all in support of BP. Mine was one. Folks are easing up on BP around here. Especially since Feinberg took over the $$$.

Here is the answer on those conspiracies.
1. No, we proved Hayward is not a scientist, at least not first. He is an accountant first and foremost.
2. The North Koreans have built a manpad for foreign export. It is similar to the Stingers that were deployed in Afghanistan years ago, with upgrades such as argon cooling. The terror network now has some of these but cannot use them, especially on commercial planes for fear of angering the Koreans. Once the first one is fired, no more will be bought. The US will remove that capability.
3. BP only sells cold beer. All BP events I went to where alcohol was provided it was cold or at the proper temperature.
4. The crabs are just starting to come back. I will eat some soon and post any transformations.

We need more action. I hope we have positive events soon.

BenD,

Can't talk for the GOM, but these days most if not all rigs workers have internet access. From my experience these are always channelled through the company's network. Individual cell connection, if you are close enough to the beach to pick them up, are normally not allowed. The claim is interference with operational frequencies and potential explosion with wire line tools.

These maybe be legitimate reasons but I am sure the fact the company can maintain some sort of control over the information being sent from the rig to shore helps them to justify the controls. Companies get very paranoid about information especially during exploration drilling.

The company networks also usually have very strong filtering software, so during our time offshore we do not have our minds corrupted by looking at a few naked ladies.

To more directly answer you question, everyone has email access, but a lot of social networking sites are filtered, some places even filter TOD. Disgusting!!

Don't know what's available on the rigs, but I do know you can get access devices for laptops that will work just about anywhere. Not cheap, but these aren't minimum wage workers. There was a guy a while back using his laptop to communicate from some place in a jungle where there was absolutely nothing else.

If there is access on the rigs, I'd be afraid the IT folks would be watching everything said. But that's what SSL and proxies are for - heh.

Edit: Ha. I cross-posted with Tool.

Time to pick your seat around the "moon pool" on the Q4000. That's 19 cameras to watch now! We will have to get organised in monitoring teams for the big event. What's the waves like; any start times yet for the Be-Bop-A-Lula main event?
http://www.bp.com/sectionbodycopy.do?categoryId=9034366&contentId=7063636

That's why TO policy is not use photos of incident scenes, you may incorporate unwanted information.

Heh. In the mining industry, this would be sufficient to get that fellow a nice fine from MSHA and/or the state inspectors.

Slightly amusing hard hat story: last January on a barge rig in S La a very young roustabout was unloading a pallet and kept taking his hard hat off. My company man walked over and told him to put it on. A half hour later we walked back by and he had his HH laying on the deck again. Coman said one warning was enough and he was going to put him on the next boat out. Asked him to let me handle it: I went over, picked up the HH and tossed it over the side onto a barge below. It was a good toss but hit a beam and bounced into the bayou. The kid just looked at me. I said next time I was going to throw him into the bayou. Needless to say he kept his HH on after that. I'll run anyone off for being dangerous but being young and foolish shouldn't cost your job if it can be avoided. I saw this approach almost 35 years ago while working offshore with another newbie geologist. He set his HH on the dining room table. The head cook came over and said that was impolite and set the HH on the floor. Next day this geologist did it again. Cook came over, didn't say a word, took the HH and open the hatch and tossed it into the GOM. Obviously made an impression on me. Waited for almost 35 years to do it to someone.

You couldn't slap the grin off my face for the rest of that day.